Last night as Nik got ready for bed for the night, he went to feed Skinnay and found that he had died. It was anticlimactic. There was no middle of the night rush to the veterinary ER and late night vigil as we waited him for him to pass, as there had been with
Chubs' death three years ago. Nik just found him: cold and stiff in the corner of his cage. I immediately felt guilty that our oft neglected pet died alone in his cage with while we were unaware of it. Nik is convinced that he couldn't have been dead for more than 24 hours, but it's anybody's guess and I feel bad for not noticing it earlier.
It's strange. In the midst of the the day-to-day craziness with the kids, Skinnay occupied such a peripheral space in our lives, so I didn't anticipate the sadness that I felt and perhaps as it was with Chubs' death, I feel the weight of my guilt for being a neglectful chin parent. Once upon a time "our boys" as we called them were a big part of our lives. They regularly ran around a little enclosure that we had created outside of the cage since Nik was worried that their cage was too cramped and we would get boxes from the post office for them to chew and explore. Once we started having kids, caring for them fell to the wayside. Now that Skinnay has passed, I can safely say that we aren't planning to have another pet for a while--I can't handle the guilt of feeling like a neglectful pet owner.
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| Meeting Skinnay for the first time almost 11 years ago |
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| Our boys used to have the run of the house |
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| Fulfilling the Chubs and Skinnay stereotype: Chubs on the top with the pellets and Skinnay on the bottom with the hay |
I'm sad that Jad probably won't have memories of him, he only recently started saying "Ski-nay" and "Cheer-o" since he loved giving Skinnay treats. We debated whether to tell the kids before breakfast this morning and decided to just do it. Kai's inital reaction was, "can we have another pet?", though he got teary later on. Sora was more immediately sad. We then showed the kids Skinnay in the shoebox that we had placed him. The kids patted him and Jad waved to him and said, "bye bye Ski-nay."
The kids and I took Skinnay to the Humane Society in the afternoon to have him cremated. Kai and Sora took turns holding the shoebox on the car ride to the Humane Society. The staff had us sit in a quiet room to say goodbye and the kids had a chance to hold him and pet him one last time. The kids were alternatively sad and being their normal playful and goofy selves, I had to repeatedly remind them to treat Skinnay's body with care and that he was not a toy since he was a pet that we had loved. I can only assume that this was a part of them processing his death.
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| I know it's a bit macabre to have a picture of Sora holding Skinnay after he passed, but I just felt bad that I didn't have any recent pictures of him |
It's probably for the best. After Chubs' death, I had always worried Skinnay would be lonely and whither away, but he didn't.. for three years, he kept at it on his own: loving his hay, running on his wheel, and begging for Cheerios when we gave him his food after the kids went to bed. I know that it's problematic to anthropomorphize animals and give them human attributes and emotions, but he must have been lonely. Sadly after he passed, I looked through all my photos and realized that I had only taken one picture of him over the course of this past year.
Nik had noticed that he had been losing weight recently and is convinced that his passing was simply a case of him getting too old. Perhaps.. but it's still difficult for me not to feel somewhat complicit.
Goodbye, Skinnay. I remember your acrobatic escapades of jumping out of your fenced enclosures and that one time that we left your cage unlatched and you ran amok in our house, chewing the baseboards and Nik's paperbacks. I'm sorry that we didn't take better care of you in the end, but hope that somehow you've been reunited with Chubs and that he's letting you use him as a body pillow. We'll miss you, buddy.
